


Small Rivers

by tainry



Category: Transformers Animated (2007)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-22 14:11:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6082344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tainry/pseuds/tainry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Homage to Okami_hu and Kujazlilmage's Rubicon series. Optimus and Bee's first kiss was unintentionally observed by a human. Small actions cause larger ripples over time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Small Rivers

LaMartina turned off the flashlight and stretched. She’d just rest her eyes for a few minutes, and then tackle the last chapter. Her parents didn’t know – she hoped – how often she gave up sleep in order to keep up her studies. She was afraid they’d find out she wasn’t really as smart as they thought she was, that she had so much difficulty getting the A’s they praised her so much for. They had worked hard all their lives and now could afford a pretty nice house in a fairly nice neighborhood. They wanted their only child to do even better. A doctor maybe, or a geneticist. And LaMartina didn’t want to disappoint them. 

Movement outside her window caught her attention. Her bedroom was on the second storey, and just over their back fence was a little park. Late night visitors to the park were mostly either homeless people or teenagers. LaMartina sat up in her chair and rubbed her eyes. These visitors were neither. 

She’d heard about the new robots, of course, even as busy as she was with school and all the other activities her parents thought it good for her to participate in. She didn’t have much time to watch TV, but she knew they were big, bigger than the usual robots that worked everywhere around the city. And they were maybe from another planet, she wasn’t sure about that part. It made sense, though, now that she was seeing them for herself. They didn’t look anything like the Sumdac robots.

A tall one, mostly red and blue, brightly metallic even in the dark between streetlamps, was carrying a small one. Very yellow. LaMartina smiled. How cute, she thought. Like a daddy robot carrying his robot child. They were talking, and the little one was waving his arms, whether in emphasis or frustration she couldn’t tell. The big one set the little down and knelt, clasping a little hand in his big ones. LaMartina wished she knew what they were talking about, but reading lips – even supposing the robots’ lip movements were like humans’ – was another thing on the long list of things she wasn’t any good at. They seemed very earnest, though. She leaned forward, bumping her nose on the glass.

The big one stood, and the two robots walked slowly toward the road on the other side of the park. They stopped at the roadside, still talking. He was so graceful, LaMartina thought suddenly. That big one, so big, but he moved carefully. While the little one was all energy, almost vibrating in place like a little kid. He seemed kind of sulky for a moment, but the big one touched his shoulder and he ducked his head. So much like a kid. 

Optimus, she remembered. The big one was called Optimus Prime. She didn’t know what the buzzy little one’s name was, but decided to find out. Once they’d gone, anyway. Right now she didn’t want to take her eyes off them. It was one thing to see pictures on TV, quite another to find giant alien robots hanging out practically in your own back yard. 

Then Prime leaned down and kissed the little one’s forehead.

LaMartina clutched the hem of the old T-shirt she used as a night dress. Suddenly the night air seemed full of the tenderness of the robot’s gesture, wafting somehow through the closed window like the scent of freshly mown grass. It was so unexpected, so gentle. So human. It was clear, she thought, from the strange hesitancy of Prime’s movements, that he had never done such a thing before. And the little one held himself utterly motionless. I’ve just seen someone’s first kiss, she realized.

She felt achingly warm, and lonely. Caught in a spell even as the robots turned like magic into cars and drove away, she couldn’t get the image out of her mind. Didn’t want to. She closed her eyes again, not wanting to see anything at all until she was sure that picture would stay clear in her mind forever. Her parents had encouraged her to give away all her stuffed animals when she’d turned ten, but now she desperately felt the need to hug someone, something. Jumping on her bed, she snuggled her pillow, her skin hot as though all of her was blushing at once. Don’t forget, she told herself. Just this once, don’t forget, even if you forget everything else you’ve ever learned or seen. One moment of complete sweetness would be her secret jewel. 

Days and weeks passed, and LaMartina began to avoid any mention of or story about the big alien robots. Her friends and parents thought, though they never said anything, that for some reason LaMartina had come to dislike them. But it was only that she didn’t want to lose sight of that one kiss in a flood of new images. She wanted the robots to stay as she had seen them, always as they had been on that one night, silvery blue lips on a golden brow. Everyone would just make fun of her if she told them.

In high school, LaMartina began taking more arts and fewer sciences. Her parents tried to hide their worry. The robots lived and fought in the city, protecting when they could, repairing when they couldn’t. She looked away from the TV screen, stepped away from conversations. The memory of a metallic kiss in the moonlight was all she needed from them. 

By the time she reached college she tried to hide her major from her parents. They wanted her in pre-med. Her heart and mind was full of poetry. There were arguments. She scrambled for grants. If she became an English Lit professor, at least that involved a post-graduate degree, and letters after her name. She’d never been able to draw past stick figures, so words became her means of expression, her solace, her twilight path back to that one memory. 

Boyfriends were few and far between. Until she met a young man whose first kiss given to her was on the forehead. Awkward but tender. Her career took them to another city to start their own family. LaMartina gathered many sweet jewels of memory and happiness as her children grew up, but always she retained that first one. Always reminding her to be kind. To cherish tenderness, even amid the wars the robots fought to defend their adopted home from others of their own kind. 

When she became a grandmother she thought of the robots again. She had learned more about them over the years, almost despite herself. Her one clear memory of Optimus and Bumblebee wasn’t erased by the new knowledge, but enhanced. There were more Cybertronian robots on Earth now, and she knew all their names. Her grandkids had most of the toys. 

She looked at her middle-aged hands. Despite all the tricks modern medicine could play with telomeres and stem cells, LaMartina knew she would grow old someday and die. She called up a recent news holo on the bedroom projector. There they were, Optimus Prime and Bumblebee. Mostly unchanged. Decades were so short a span to them, even the rigors of war had altered them very little. She was glad. 

Long after she was gone, the big shining one and the little busy one would still love each other.


End file.
